WASHINGTON – The Justice Department is cracking down on leaks of information to news media, and Attorney General Pam Bondi says prosecutors have the power to hunt government officials who make “fraudulent disclosures” to journalists using subpoena, court orders and search warrants.
The new regulations announced by Bondi in a memo to staff obtained by the Associated Press on Friday have retracted the Biden administration’s policy of protecting journalists from secret seized while investigating the leak.
The new regulations argue that media outlets must respond to subpoena “when approved at the appropriate level of the Department of Justice” and allow prosecutors to use court orders and search warrants to “force information production and testimony and to be associated with the press media.”
The memo states that media members “have the right to proceed with notifications of such investigative activities,” and that the subpoena is “drawn narrowly.”
The warrant must also include “a protocol designed to limit the scope of intrusion into materials that may be protected from the scope of intrusion or news collection activities.”
“The Justice Department will not tolerate unfair disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies, sacrifice government agencies, and harm the American people,” writes Bondy.
Under the new policy, before deciding whether to use intrusive tactics against news media, the Attorney General is to assess whether there is a reasonable basis for believing that the crime was committed and whether he believes that the information the government is seeking is necessary for prosecution.
It also determines whether the prosecutor first made a reasonable attempt to “get information from alternative sources” and whether the government first “sought negotiations with members affected by the news media.”
The restrictions come when the Trump administration complained about a series of news stories that pulled back curtains on internal decision-making, intelligence report assessments, and the activities of prominent officials such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses.
National Intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard said this week that she was leaking a trio of “crime” referrals to the Department of Justice on Intelligence Reporting Agency to the media.
Policy changes also occur during the Trump administration’s highest level of scrutiny of their own expiration in protecting confidential information.
National Security Advisor Michael Waltz revealed last month that he inadvertently added journalists to group text using a signal-encrypted messaging service.
Hegseth faces drumbeats of his own revelation regarding his use of signals, including chats that include his wife and brothers.
In a statement, Bruce Brown of the Press Reporters Committee said in a statement that “by protecting the free flow of information, strong protections for journalists serve the American people.”
“From Watergate to Watergate after 9/11 to legitimate eavesdropping, some of the most consequential reports in US history remained possible as reporters were able to protect the identity of confidential sources and reveal and report important stories to people across their political sphere,” he said.
The policy that Bondi was created by then General Merrick Garland in the wake of revelation that Justice Department officials warned reporters in three news organizations, the Washington Post, CNN and the New York Times, says their phone records were obtained in the final year of the Trump administration.
New regulations from Garland showed a surprising reversal of the practice of seizures of phone records that were persisting across multiple presidential administrations.
Obama, under then General Eric Holder, Warned the Associated Press in 2013 The secretly obtaining two-month phone records of reporters and editors, what the top executives of the news cooperative called a “large and unprecedented invasion” of news gathering activities.
After the blowback, the owners released a series of revised guidelines for leakage investigations, including requesting approval of the highest level department before subpoenaing news media records.
However, the department maintains the privilege of seizing journalist records, and recent disclosures to news media organizations show that practices continued in the Trump Department of Justice as part of multiple investigations.
